 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: The Neon Demon • Year: 2016 • Country: USA • Director: Nicolas Winding Refn • Main cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote • Runtime: 118 min • Production company: Space Rocket Nation, Vendian Entertainment • TRAILER |
It’s not new that Nicolas Winding Refn is a surprisingly talented director. He’s known since his feature debut Pusher (1996), that became a trilogy, and he’s been keeping the critics and festivals busy with films like Bronson (2008, starring Tom Hardy), Drive (2011) or Only God Forgives (2013). I believe he’s one of those directors that manages to provide a personal nature to his films. He leaves a distinctive signature in all his work, and I also believe as a creator he evolves, he risks, and his work becomes even more personal. And personal work is controversial and often target of criticism. I guess that’s one of the reasons why he keeps the critics divided with his newest piece of art The Neon Demon.
If I allow myself to refer to this movie as a piece of art is because I see a clear parallelism between those coordinated moving images and the history of our human art: I believe he’s reached a point of abstraction in the film that leaves behind conventional explanations in order to go for the purity of ideas and the literalness of the concepts. I believe he’s done a delightful surprise, that requires the will of watching a film from a different point of view, and the exercise of jumping from literalness to metaphor, in order to think over the depravity of society, rivalry and crazy competition – depicted in the modelling industry, but that can easily be extended to any other human field. I believe the special treatment of the narration in the story, the incredibly beauty of the photography, and the great editing of all together with the music (by Cliff Martinez, who worked before with the director in the soundtrack of Drive (2011)) makes the two hours go by fast while staring at the young talented Elle Fanning (Super 8 (2011), Somewhere (2010)), Jena Malone (Sucker Punch (2011), The Hunger Games (2012)), Christina Hendricks (Mad Men (2007–2015)), Bella Heathcote (Dark Shadows (2012)) and Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)) – because effectively, the female characters take the leadership here.
The Neon Demon is a film that plays with the concept of beauty itself, risky enough to simplify and contain, including ancient beliefs in an L.A. modern scene, mixing reality with dreams and nightmares, violence, fights, predators and demons, all of it stalked by the weight of darkness, only dissipated by some glimmer of eventual hope. If there’s any. Again, you need to watch it to see what you believe.
RATE: 7/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1974419
